Senate committee passes updated budget bill

Senators took their editing pens across the state budget bill, deleting $100,000 for a Christian school in Breathitt County as well as questionable language requiring a district’s senator and representative to agree on infrastructure projects.

The Senate Appropriations and Revenue Committee passed the updated version 16-0 shortly just before 9 p.m.

There will be no floor amendments offered to the budget bill on Friday morning, said Sen. Robert Stivers, the Republican floor leader from Manchester. But some key provisions that are House and Senate priorities were stripped out of the bill and placed into a committee amendment so the leaders of the two chambers could negotiate over some of those items without having to open up the entire budget bill in a conference committee.

UPDATED: Among the changes the Senate panel made was suggesting a way for more school districts with the buildings in most need of being replaced to pay for new construction.

And an amendment would spend $200,000 to help fun a study by the Pew Foundation and Council on Local Governments to review the efficiency of the state’s corrections system from the courtroom to prison cells.

Stivers said the Pew Foundation had pledged $750,000 but wanted to make sure Kentucky “had some skin in the game.”

“It’s a small amount for us to get that kind of professional consulting,” he said.